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Deadly stalemate awaits the West in ISIL showdown

Washington analysts say the taunting brutality of the Islamic State presents an agonizing dilemma for the Obama administration, which is bereft of easy choices — or easy solutions — to the complex mess that spans Syria and Iraq.

It is the execution of photojournalist James Foley that this week galvanized American minds on the fledgling, self-declared Islamic State that sprawls today between Damascus and Baghdad, writes Mitch Potter.
(THE ASSOCIATED PRESS file photo)

WASHINGTON—They collect taxes, operate courts, police everything from the price of meat to the flow of gasoline to how many millimetres of publicly exposed female skin warrants imprisonment, or worse.

They gather and burn heaping mounds of forbidden cigarettes; they wage running battles against alcohol even as they fight actual war on four fronts, erasing borders where they can.

They coddle and coach young boys in the wonders of killing infidels, demand fealty, supplication and ransom, sometimes all of the above. They believe. They cut hands, they brutalize, they crucify. And, in the heart-rending case of U.S. photojournalist James Foley, they behead.

It is the execution of Foley — as media-savvy as it was medieval — that this week galvanized American minds on the fledgling, self-declared Islamic State that sprawls today between Damascus and Baghdad.

After a summer of border-busting expansion in which the IS (also known as both ISIS and ISIL) all but eclipsed Al Qaeda, Foley’s death triggered the ominous pounding of war drums in Washington.

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In the wake of President Barack Obama’s initial reaction — the branding of IS as a “cancer” — senior voices in the Pentagon appeared to go all-in Thursday, vowing the dystopian caliphate posed an unprecedented threat that must be wiped out.

“They can be contained, but not in perpetuity,” said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggesting that Washington is ready for a wider war than the limited air strikes that began Aug. 8.

“This is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days vision which will eventually have to be defeated.”

And then Friday senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes appeared to signal a tipping point, telling reporters Foley’s killing “represents a terrorists attack against our country” and “we’re not going to be restricted by borders” in addressing the threat.

Paranoia got the better of some, including Texas Governor Rick Perry, who warned of the “real possibility” that IS operatives had already traversed the U.S. border with Mexico. American officials later smacked down Perry’s concern, calling his warning baseless.

Beneath the rhetoric, however, Washington analysts say the taunting brutality of the Islamic State presents an agonizing dilemma for the Obama administration, which is bereft of easy choices — or easy solutions — to the complex mess that spans Syria and Iraq.

The Islamic State is neither invincible nor easily eliminated, barring the return of American boots on the ground in large numbers. And such a move would be “tremendously unlikely,” given the absence of American public consensus on mobilizing for yet another Middle East war.

“No one has offered a plausible strategy to defeat ISIL that does not include a major U.S. commitment on the ground and the renewal of functional governance on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border. And no one will, because none exists,” wrote Brian Fishman, a fellow of the New America Foundation.

Moreover, Fishman argued, no serious authority on jihadism advocates such a scale-up because it is precisely what the Islamic State wants — all-out war with the Great Satan, “because war is the only force terrible enough to hold together” the disaffected Sunni Muslim population that tolerates it.

“Without war, ISIL is a fringe terrorist organization. With war, it is a state,” wrote Fishman.

With the fate of Foley known but that of more than 20 other hostages unclear, an acute information deficit prevails within the mercurial borders of the Islamic State, which for most news organizations stands as a story too deadly to tell.

The New York Times punctured the gap in late July, offering a limited glimpse inside the city of Raqqa, the de facto jihadist capital, attributed to “An Employee of the New York Times.”

The account described how a combination of “strategic management and brute force” had enabled the early signs of a state that “blends its fundamentalist interpretation of Islam with the practicalities of governance.”

Then in early August, on the eve of the first American air strikes aimed at halting the IS advance beyond the Iraqi city of Mosul, Vice News published the first installment in an extraordinary and controversial six-part documentary based on three weeks of tightly controlled travels inside the territory.

Effectively, Vice News stringer Medyan Dairieh embedded with the Islamic State, gaining unprecedented access in the company of its armed and angry true believers — and lived to tell the tale. The project has been hailed as everything from extraordinary journalism to “the ISIS porn channel.” It remains unclear what control the organization imposed over the raw footage that Vice ultimately published.

The Islamic State hardly needed Vice’s help in sending its message, given its mastery of social media. Much of the travels take place in the company of IS “press officer” Abu Mosa, who at one point abandons his media duties to pick up a weapon and join a firefight against a Syrian army outpost.

“I say to America that the Islamic Caliphate has been established,” Abu Mosa told Vice. “Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq.

“We will humiliate them everywhere, God-willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.”

But as the shock of Foley’s execution set in this week, it also became clear Abu Mosa’s days of flag-raising are over. In a turn of events almost beyond ironic, the press aid was killed in an attack near Raqqa by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Precisely one year ago, Assad’s regime was in what seemed to be the imminent crosshairs of U.S. air strikes, in the wake of the Aug. 21, 2013, chemical attacks on the outskirts of Damascus that killed an estimated 1,000 Syrians.

Ever since, Assad’s forces, with help from Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon, and IS have largely left each other alone, consolidating their relative positions. The Syrian army instead concentrated on regaining ground from other rebel groups in the fragmented Syrian opposition, including moderate movements backed by the U.S.

The speed with which tables are turning has sparked hawkish calls for a reappraisal of Assad’s role, in battling IS — a scenario that fills many longtime Mideast watchers with head-shaking disgust.

The White House signaled Friday that at least part of its goal is to achieve a more co-ordinated Western strategy against the threat of IS loyalists who hold Western passports. That threat, which registered so palpably in the British accent (and likely British citizenship) of Foley’s executioner, could be the subject of a New York summit in September, White House officials say.

In the meantime, many envision a stalemate, with the Islamic State unlikely to become bigger or smaller, in the near-term, regardless of its transnational appeal. To the west and to the east, the Sunni Muslim extremists face geopolitical, sectarian realities – the large Shiite majorities of both Lebanon and Iraq – that are likely to bar continuing expansion, regardless of how Washington reacts.

“The best prospect (the Islamic State) can offer its constituency is a Sunni state even more landlocked than Iraq was under Saddam and severely lacking in secure access to oil markets and trade,” wrote Yezid Sayigh of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

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